


Beyond the light

by Llyneth



Series: Femslash February 2019 [5]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, junko probably planned this tbh, not quite character death but yeah, sayaka recovers some memories sorta?, tragic, vague mention of leon though he's out of the room for this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-17 17:02:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21057887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llyneth/pseuds/Llyneth
Summary: A Sayaka/Kyoko look at Sayaka's killing motive and her final moments.Sayaka's pov.





	Beyond the light

She finds herself pushed up against cold bathroom tile before she knows it, broken wrist thumping pain in time with her heartbeat.

Cornered.

Desperate.

Hopeless.

His shadow passes along the wall - or she imagines it does. The door knob rattles in the heavy silence but she doesn't back down.

_Can't_ now.

It's too late and too far, she knows, and yet she still dares to hold the last sliver of hope to her chest, praying she can escape.

Turn it around.

Somehow.

Steeling her resolve, she pulls herself up with what little strength she has left, slides against the shower door, then staggers to her feet.

\--

The truth is, no matter what happens tomorrow - what anyone says, what anyone_ thinks - _It _wasn't_ what the video showed that made her do it.

Her friends, singing under the kaleidoscope of lights, suddenly dropping to the ground as the music fizzled out, boneless, unmoving...

Yeah, It was bad.

Awful, heartbreaking, the stuff of nightmares, but.

But... she could continue.

They'd always given each other hope, no matter what. They'd maintained a friendly rivalry and collective strength of will - you had to in the business: rosters changed, careers were made or destroyed on a whim and everyone just had to adapt.

Sink or swim, right?

She _knew_ she could pick up the pieces of her shattered heart and keep on walking, smiling, living. She'd done it before, she'd do it again. She owed them that, to keep fighting, to uncover why they had died and bring them justice. Or at the very least, peace.

But to push her to kill an innocent person...?

In the end, it was what the scene _didn't show_ that became her undoing. Pulling and twisting her apart piece by piece, like a child picking petals from a flower.

_She loves me... she loves me not..._

There was someone else in the video.

Sayaka couldn't _see_ her - mostly out of frame and obscured by her bandmates; steeped in enough darkness to render her little more than a shadow - but she could _feel_ her. Somewhere beyond the garish stage lights, nestled away amongst the crowd. A slender form leaning against the scaffolding and melting into the darkness. She shouldn't have felt her presence but her eyes were drawn to that dark corner, by some kind of instinct she'd forgotten. Like it was muscle memory to squint into the void, searching intently for the inky outline of a person she could not recall, but knew was important.

She imagined, then, vividly, how she'd look from the stage: the way the colours in her eyes would change with the lights as they went through their routine, the yellows and blues bathing her in an angelic glow. Her hair, she remembered, was supernaturally pale. White, or blonde. Or pink? Luminescent, like moonlight. Like stars.

Like the ethereal glow of a TV screen in the pitch black night.

She gasped when it hit her.

That feeling... It had happened before, when she'd been a child. Flipping through the channels at midnight, orange-yellow-blue-white, orange-yellow-blue, searching for her idol. Falling in love over and over again with the girl on the screen, dancing with her in the midnight glow, holding out hands that would never touch, never reach the person trapped behind the screen. Devotion from a distance, love lit by glitter and neon bright signs. Her first love, idyllic and sweet but impossible.

Except, no. This was different. She'd become an idol to meet her, but in person there were no stars, only flashing cameras, and her hands could touch but never reach the girl-now-woman who'd captivated her as a child. It wasn't real.

_But this?_

The longer she looked and let herself feel, the less she felt like it was a trick of her mind, or a fantasy. There was no bittersweet feeling of nostalgia. No longing for a life she'd never had, or daydreaming about intimacy her job and childhood never allowed. Instead, there were...

Recollections. Sensations.

The feel of a hand in hers - warm and calloused, solid and imperfectly, perfectly real. She could feel the valleys and ridges like constellations across her palm, fingers catching and words falling into place with the forgotten memory.

"Hey, i think i've found Leo!" She'd said, fingers dancing lightly from palm to fingertip. She'd been giddly, bubbly, so warm with happiness she could burst. "Oh wait... maybe it's Virgo? Let me check my phone."

She'd remembered laughter then, "They look nothing alike" and "you're hopeless!" spoken fondly through a kiss to her temple. It tingled, like her mind forgot but her body remembered, and once the dam had been opened so many others poured out. Flashes of colour, snippets of conversations. Hot breath on her cheek and a hand around her waist, the tinny, staticky radio playing a love song as they danced slowly in the twilight.

Entwined hands. Cherry lipbalm kisses. Dark eyes in a dark room. A patchwork of moments that were theirs alone, stitched together into one life that they shared.

Together.

The smell of leather and musk that curled around her as she closed her eyes, leaned back and realized (remembered) for the first time what home felt like.

Then the scene changed, and the tilt of her chin concealed the tears from the cameras as they pooled and spilled over, dripping hot and wet down the back of her shirt.

\--

The bathroom faucet drips and Sayaka almost jumps out of her skin.

She's upright but barely, arm a heavy useless weight that keeps her feeling like she'll tip over at any moment. She can't run, she decides, trying to calm her panic as she hears Makoto's door open, soft footfalls on the carpet getting closer and closer...

But she can do this. She can be sweet. She can change his mind, make him leave, make him drop his guard.

Because _she_ wasn't there in the video. 

And if she wasn't there... no body, no trace of her to be found, then what if...?

What if she were alive in the world.

Waiting for Sayaka to come home?

\--

With a smile on her face and the images of a thousand possibilities flashing behind her eyes, she reaches for the door.

**Author's Note:**

> I replayed DR again and thought it would be super tragic if Sayaka got some memories back but didn't recognize Kyoko so. Here you go i guess. T_T Also this was a random thing that just popped into my head after like 2 years of solid writer's block (plus plenty of Real Life Shenanigans because who doesn't love those?) and reading Luckycat's lovely comment on Scarred so thanks! =D <33333


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